American Indian Education

This paper was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education's Indian Nations at
Risk Task Force and was completed in 1992. A shorter version of this
paper appeared in the
January 1992 issue of the Journal of American Indian
Education.

Plans for Dropout Prevention and Special School Support Services
for American Indian and Alaska Native Students

Jon Reyhner

Abstract

American Indian and Alaska Native students have a dropout
rate twice the national average; the highest dropout rate of any United
States ethnic or racial group. About three out of every ten Native students
drop out of school before graduating from high school both on reservations
and in cities. Academically capable Native students often drop out of school
because their needs are not being met while others are pushed out because
they protest in a variety of ways how they are treated in school.

As the psychiatrist Erik Erikson has pointed out, positive identity
formation is an ongoing, cumulative process that starts in the home with
a trusting relationship established between mother and child and develops
through the child's interaction with other children and adults. To build
a strong positive identity, new adults that the child interacts with need
to reinforce and build on the cultural messages that the child has previously
received. However, too often in schools today teachers are not reinforcing
what Native parents show and tell their children producing cultural discontinuity
between home and school and forcing Native children to choose between their
Native heritage and school success with disastrous results. Many of the
problems faced by students such as drug and alcohol abuse are symptoms
of the poor self concepts of Native students who have unresolved internal
conflicts resulting from educators asking students to give up their Native
culture. Teaching methods and school curriculum need to be changed to reduce
cultural conflict between home and school. In addition, the underlying
causal factor of internal identity conflict in many Native teenagers needs
to be treated at a community as well as an individual level through community-based
counseling programs.

In order to help Native students form positive, mature identities
and to reduce the number of Native dropouts large schools need to be restructured
to allow teachers to get to know and interact with their students, caring
teachers (especially Native teachers) need to be recruited who will spend
the time and effort to learn from as well as teach their students, these
caring teachers need to use active teaching strategies with their students
to keep their students motivated, Native curriculum needs to be developed
and used in Native schools to reduce cultural discontinuity, testing needs
to be used in schools to help students learn rather than to track them
into non-academic programs, and parents need to have the power to demand
schools give their children an education that will strengthen Native families
rather than separate Native children from their parents. Academic student
advocacy programs such as the ones sponsored by the American Indian Science
and Engineering Society and by tribal colleges need to be encouraged.

Both on and off reservations many schools are not providing an appropriate
education for Native students. They are denied teachers who have special
training to teach Native students, they are denied a curriculum that includes
their heritage, and culturally biased tests are used to push them out of
academic programs. The supplemental add-on programs such as Indian Education
Act, Johnson O'Malley (JOM), Bilingual Education, Special Education, and
other federal programs of the last two decades have had a limited success
in improving the education of Indian children. However, add-on programs
are only a first step to making schooling appropriate for Native children.
Native education must be viewed holistically rather than fragmented with
basic skills, Native studies, and other classes taught in isolation from
one another. In addition to treating the curriculum holistically, dropout
prevention needs to be treated holistically. Students do not drop out of
school just because of academic failure, drug and alcohol abuse, or any
other single problem. Too often well meaning add-on remedial programs focus
on finding the reason for failure in students and their homes, "blaming
the victims." These programs treat the symptoms of the cultural conflict
going on between students and teachers in school rather than the root problem.
The idea that Native students are "culturally disadvantaged" or "culturally
deprived" reflects an ethnocentric bias that should not continue. When
schools do not recognize, value, and build on what Native students learn
at home, they are given a watered-down, spread out curriculum that is meant
to guarantee student learning but which often results in their education
being slowed and their being "bored out" of school. The "traditional school
system" has failed dropouts rather than they having failed the system.

Beyond correcting these problems to prevent future dropouts, more
needs to be done to help current dropouts through retrieval programs such
as the Graduate Equivalency Diploma (GED) and community-based drug prevention
programs. In addition, the negative tinge of vocational programs needs
to be removed, and these programs opened to all students. In particular,
vocational programs need to be tied to real jobs through partnerships with
business, labor unions, and government.

Dropout prevention starts with caring teachers who give students
every chance for success in the classroom through interactive and experiential
teaching methodologies, relevant, and culturally appropriate curriculum.
At risk students need peer support through cooperative instructional methodologies
and peer counseling programs. Dropout prevention also includes support
services outside of the classroom from school administrators and counselors
who work closely with parents.

If teachers and school administrators continue to not get appropriate
training in colleges of education, local training programs need to provide
school staff with information both on what works in Native education and
information about the language, hi story, and culture of their Native students.
Parents and local school boards also need on-going training about what
works in Native education and what schools can accomplish. Head Start,
elementary, and secondary schools need the support of tribal education
departments and tribal colleges to design and implement effective educational
programs that support rather than ignore Native heritages.

The National Center for Education Statistics (1989) reports that American
Indian and Alaska Native students have a dropout rate twice the national
average; the highest dropout rate of any United States ethnic or racial
group reported. About three out of every ten Native students drop out of
school before graduating from high school both on reservations and in cities
(see Table 1). The research reported in this chapter shows that academically
capable Native students often drop out of school because their needs are
not being met while others are pushed out because they protest in a variety
of ways how they are treated in school. The studies reviewed in this chapter
show that both on and off reservations many schools are not providing an
appropriate education for Native students. They are denied teachers with
special training to teach Native students, they are denied a curriculum
that includes their heritage, and culturally biased tests are used to label
them failures and push them out of academic programs.

Table 1. Summary of Recent Dropout Studies

Study

Location

Grades

Dropout Rate

Native Dropout Rate1

Number of Native Dropouts

Deyhle (1989)

SE Utah

9-12

36.0%

181

Eberhard (1989)

10 Urban Schools

9-12

12.0% (State Ave.)

29.0%

106

National2 (1989)

National

10-12

14.8% White/17.3% Total

35.5%

11613

Office (1998)

Chinle Agency

10-12

30.0%

Platero, et al. (1986)

Navajo Nation

7-124

31%

10003

1Cohort Dropout Rates. Studies by school districts sometimes
give the dropout rate for one year, which gives dropout rates almost 2/3
less than the above studies. One-year studies such as reported by Borgrink
(1987) ignore students who will drop out in subsequent years before graduating
or who have dropped out in previous years. Longitudinal studies are those
that follow students through high school or studies that go back to look
at previous school records and then try to trace students forward through
their school years. The above studies ignore students who drop out before
the first grade level included in the study.
2Data from "High School and Beyond" survey conducted by the
National Center for Educational statistics from 1980 to 1986. Weighted
sampling was used to include enough Native students in the study to make
Native sample large enough to provide useful information on them.
3Approximate figures.
4Twenty-five percent random sample from most reservation
schools.
The Native student dropout problem is not of recent origin. Only a
small percentage of students attending the famous Carlisle Indian School
in the Nineteenth Century actually graduated (Eastman, 1935). The 1969
Senate report, Indian Education: A National Tragedy--A National Challenge,
also documented dropout rates for American Indians at twice the national
average. That report led to the passage of the Indian Education Act. Many
Native people testified in the Indian Nations at Risk (INAR) Task Force
hearings to the success of Indian Education Act, Bilingual Education Act,
Chapter 1, and other supplemental, add-on programs. However, ethnographic
studies done of classrooms across the country since 1969 show that supplemental
programs are not enough to solve the problem. The need for school-wide
reforms is pointed out by the recent Department of Education (ED) sponsored
study on dropout prevention (Sherman & Sherman, 1990).

As reported by Estelle Fuchs and Robert J. Havighurst from the National
Study of Indian Education in the late 1960s, "Many Indian children live
in homes and communities where the cultural expectations are different
and discontinuous from the expectations held by schoolteachers and school
authorities" (1972, p. 299). Many Native students are forced to choose
between their Native heritage and schooling. If they choose their heritage,
they can fall further and further behind and eventually be pushed out of
school. If they choose school, they can suffer serious psychological problems
resulting from the rejection of their homes and families which can lead
to drug and alcohol abuse. In the INAR Task Force hearings, much testimony
was given on the need for Native teachers and Native curriculum to reduce
the cultural conflict between home and school.

Positive identity formation as the psychiatrist Erik Erikson (1963)
has pointed out is an ongoing, cumulative process that starts in the home
with a trusting relationship established between mother and child and develops
through the child's interaction with other children and adults. To build
a strong positive identity, new adults that the child interacts with need
to reinforce and build on the cultural messages that the child has previously
received. If teachers give growing Native children messages that conflict
with what Native parents show and tell their children, the conflicting
messages will confuse the children and hurt the formation of strong self
concepts.

A long term study of Native Hawaiian students showed conventional schools
force Native students to choose between their home culture and the culture
of the school with disastrous results (Jordan, 1984; Tharp, 1982; Vogt,
Jordan, & Tharp, 1987). When teaching methodology was changed to reflect
how students were taught in the home, students showed greater academic
achievement. Cultural mismatch between home and school often starts a cycle
of failure for Native students (Spindler, 1987).

Too often, well meaning remedial programs focus on finding the reason
for failure in students and their homes, "blaming the victims." The idea
that Native students are "culturally disadvantaged" or "culturally deprived"
reflects an ethnocentric bias that should not continue. When schools do
not recognize, value, and build on what Native students learn at home,
they are given a watered-down, spread out curriculum that is meant to guarantee
student learning but which often results in their education being slowed
and their being "bored out" of school. As a Denver adult education teacher
summed it up in the INAR/National Advisory Council on Indian Education
(NACIE) Joint Issues Session in San Diego the "traditional school system"
has failed dropouts rather than they having failed the system.

Two major studies (Deyhle, 1989; Platero, 1986) of Native dropouts found
that a traditional Native orientation was not a handicap in regard to school
success. In addition, the Navajo Dropout study found that "the most successful
students were for the most part fluent Navajo/English bilinguals" (Platero,
1986, p. 6). Lin (1990) found Native college students who had traditional
orientations outperformed those with modern orientations.

Dropout prevention

To prevent students from dropping out of school, it is necessary to
know why they drop out. Many studies have focused on the supposed deficits
of students who drop out, including their parents' income, their intelligence,
and their school attendance. Less attention has been given to the deficits
of the schools and teachers pushing Native students out, but this is an
even more important topic for Native parents and educators.

Recent studies (see Table 1) show that Native students continue to drop
out of school at twice the national average. The National Center for Education
Statistics reports dropout rates for American Indian students at 35.5 percent
in 1989. The largest detailed recent study done in 1986 by the Navajo Division
of Education reports a 31 percent dropout rate (Platero, Brandt, Witherspoon,
& Wong, 1986). This rate is confirmed by a smaller detailed study done
on the Utah portion of the Navajo Reservation (Deyhle, 1989). Other smaller
studies give similar rates. The 1989 Northern Cheyenne educational census
also shows 31 percent of Indian adults without either a high school education
or a GED program (Ward & Wilson, p. 26).

All the above figures are only slightly higher than the 27.1 percent
of Native teenagers between the ages of sixteen and nineteen living on
reservations that were found in the 1980 census to be not enrolled in any
school and who were not high school graduates. However the census figures
also showed wide variation among reservations as to how many Native teenagers
were not in school. One New Mexico Pueblo had only 5.2 percent of those
teenagers not getting a high school education while several small Nevada,
Arizona, Washington, and California sites had no students completing a
high school education (Bureau, 1985).

Research indicates a number of factors associated with higher student
dropout rates. Factors that are particularly critical for Native students
include:

Large schools

Uncaring teachers

Passive teaching methods

Irrelevant curriculum

Inappropriate testing

Tracked classes

Lack of parent involvement

Each of these factors is explained in detail below [see also Weis, Farrar,
& Petrie (1989) for a general discussion on dropouts describing some
of the factors discussed below].

Large schools

There is evidence that the increased size of American schools, especially
the large comprehensive high schools with more than one thousand students,
creates conditions for dropouts. Recently, the National Study of Schooling
(Goodlad, 1984) criticized large schools for creating factory-like environments
that prevent teachers and other school staff from forming personal relationships
with students. The recent ED sponsored study on dropout prevention (Sherman
& Sherman, 1990) found small class and program size, low pupil-teacher
ratios, program autonomy, and a supportive school environment associated
with successful dropout prevention. It found that "many students who have
not met with success in the regular school program have been alienated
by a large, bureaucratic system that does not respond to their unique needs"
(p. 49).

Smaller schools also allow a greater percentage of students to participation
in extra-curricular activities. Students participating in these activities,
especially sports when excessive travel is not required, drop out less
frequently (Platero, et al., 1986). Many reservation schools do not have
drama clubs, debate teams, and other non-sport extra-curricular activities
which would help develop Native student leadership and language skills.

Another negative feature of large schools revealed in the Navajo Dropout
Study (Platero, et al., 1986) is that in rural areas students are often
required to take long bus rides to school. Students who miss the bus often
cannot find alternative transportation thus increasing their absenteeism.
Long distances between homes and school also discourage parents from taking
a more active role in school activities. An educator from Cuba High School
in the INAR/NACIE Joint Issues Sessions in San Diego testified on how some
students had to get up at 5:00 am to catch the school bus at 6:30 am so
they could start class at 8:50 am.

Unless large schools are restructured to create schools within schools
and larger blocks of time that individual teachers can form human relationships
with individual students, it is difficult for caring teachers to interact
with any one student long enough to know a student personally and to form
the kind of supportive relationship described in the section on teachers
below which will help a student stay in school. Another approach to this
problem has been the creation in large urban areas such as Buffalo, New
York, of Native magnet schools to provide both the closeness and culturally
appropriate curriculum that Native at risk students need to succeed.

Uncaring teachers

The importance of warm, supportive, and caring teachers is documented
in the Native student dropout research (Coladarci, 1983; Deyhle, 1989;
Platero, et al., 1986). Caring teachers are willing to learn about their
students and their students' cultures as well as to teach students. From
what they learn, caring teachers adjust their teaching to fit the cultural
background of their students. Fewer Native students report that "discipline
is fair," that "the teaching is good," that "teachers are interested in
students," and that "teachers really listen to me" than other racial or
ethnic group (National, 1990, p. 43). Two General Equivalency Diploma (GED)
instructors note in supplemental testimony before the INAR Task Force hearings
in Seattle that:

Those students who study for the GED examination often are
experiencing for the first time instructors who are Native American themselves,
and who truly acknowledge that they are intelligent human beings who are
capable of learning and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
For many, this is a new concept. (Document 191, p. 5)

In testimony at the INAR/NACIE Joint Issues Sessions in San Diego, an educator
testified,

Students who have dropped out have indicated to us that
their reasons include not being able to identify with what is going on in the
classroom, teachers not really explaining what needed to be done, teachers
going too fast, insufficient time to complete class assignments. They felt
that they had been put on a schedule with no flexibility. If they needed
more time on a test, it wasn't allowed. They also felt defeated because
teachers and other school staff members didn't seem to understand the m.
The easy way out was just to leave school.

Ms. Michelle Credo who served as a duty aide at Juneau Middle School testified,

I have seen discrimination in the treatment of students.
There
is too much emphasis on punishment, and the same kids are being punished
over and over. My role in discipline was to supervise in-school suspension,
and I was supposed to discourage them from any infraction. I was learning
a lot from listening to them. Many came from dysfunctional families or
families that feel powerless against the school system. Many were very
bright, but teachers would tell me that I could get more work out of them because I had fewer to supervise. These young people had leadership
capacity that was not being nurtured at all. I tried to suggest providing
a counseling program rather than simply resorting to punishment (sit and
do homework or nothing). I wanted the school to look at why these problems
kept occurring. (INAR Second Meeting, Juneau, AK, August 2, 1990)

Whenever possible students should be involved in making and enforcing school
rules. The success of this approach was found by Albert Kneale in a Native
school ninety years ago (1950) and were described by William Glasser in
his book Schools Without Failure, first published in 1968.

The most complete account of how caring individual attention to Native
students leads to academic success is given in Kleinfeld's 1979 study of
an Alaskan school, St. Mary's. St. Mary's, a Catholic boarding school,
was successful despite what would be generally considered inadequate funding.
Kleinfeld concluded from her study of the school that,

The most important kind of education happening at the
school
is not happening through subject matter instruction or through teaching
technical skills. It happened through the communication of values, of principles
for organizing one's life despite the disorganizing pressures of cultural
change. This system of values is communicated only in small part by direct
teaching. Rather, it is lodged within the structure of student and staff
relationships at the school. These standards are communicated above all
through the intimate associations that develop at St. Mary's between teachers
and their students. (1979, pp. 27-28)

St. Mary's volunteer teachers interacted with students both in and out
of the classroom. The school was "a village society with a structure of
social relationships similar to that of the students' own communities"
(p. 32) and "most classes taught by the volunteers were a mixture of factual
information, personal experiences of the teacher, references to Eskimo
village life, delightful in-jokes, and broad humor" (p. 34). St. Mary's
students did not score higher on standardized tests than graduates from
other schools, but the experience and self-confidence gained from interacting
with caring adults allowed them to master the college environment better.

Another successful Native school reinforces some of Kleinfeld's conclusions.
Rock Point Community School in Arizona draws many of its non-Native teachers
(about half the high school teaching staff) from returned Peace Corps volunteers.
These teachers care about the community as well as their jobs and see education
in a more holistic way. Teaching subject matter is only a part, and not
necessarily the major part, of their jobs (Reyhner, 1990).

An ethnographic study done on Navajos and Utes, including both interviews
with students and classroom observations, reports that students "complained
bitterly that their teachers did not care about them or help them in school"
(Deyhle, 1989, p. 39). This study also reports that "a little less than
half of the Navajo and almost two-thirds of the Ute [students] felt school
was not important for what they wanted to do in life" (p. 42). She also
finds that "When youth experienced minimal individual attention or personal
contact with their teachers, they translated this into an image of teacher
dislike and rejection" (p. 39).

Time and again in the INAR Task Force hearings Native parents testified
about the need for more Native teachers both to provide role models for
their children and for the unique cultural knowledge they have to offer.
Unfortunately, in an attempt to improve the quality of teaching in the
United States, changes have been made in teacher preparation programs and
certification standards that aggravate rather than solve problems for Native
education. Increased certification standards are preventing Native students
from entering the teaching profession because the National Teachers Examination
and other tests used are culturally biased and fail to measure Native student
strengths. The Winter 1989 issue of the Fair Test Examiner reported
how nearly 38, 000 Black, Latino, Native and other minority teacher candidates
are being barred from classrooms by teacher competency tests. In addition,
teacher preparation and certification programs are culturally and linguistically
"one size fits all," and the size that is measured is a middle-class, Western-European
cultural orientation. Recent research has identified a wide body of knowledge
about bilingual education, Native learning styles, and English-as-a-second-language
(ESL) teaching techniques that teachers of Native students need to know.
In addition teachers of Native students should have a Native cultural literacy
specific to the tribal background of their students. But teachers often
get just one generic multicultural course in accredited teacher education
programs.

An additional key factor previously mentioned that is not evaluated
by either tests or course grades is teacher personality. Studies (Kleinfeld,
1979; Coburn, 1989; Deyhle, 1989; Platero, Brandt, Witherspoon, & Wong,
1986) clearly show the Native student's need for warm, supportive teachers.
These teachers need to use active teaching strategies, described by Cummins
(1988) as experiential and interactive. Teachers of Native students cannot
assume that their students will be automatically interested in academic
subject matter. Teachers must constantly draw connections for their students
between academic knowledge and its application to the real world. The Indian
Education Act Applied Literacy Program at Rock Point Community School is
an excellent example of academic instruction in a practical environment.
As students develop their their literacy skills, they get to use them on
a low wattage television station and in an award winning school newspaper
(Reyhner, 1990). Basic skills must be taught in a context of meaningful
student activity, and meaningful means meaningful for the student
as well as the teacher.

The structure of secondary schools needs changing to allow for more
teacher-student contact. The present reliance on the "Carnegie Unit" produces
a fragmentation of the curriculum. Examples of Native schools that have
worked to solve this program include Crazy Horse High School in Wanblee,
South Dakota, and Monument Valley High School in Kayenta, Arizona. At Wanblee,
English and social studies classes are integrated in the high school across
grade levels. At Kayenta, subjects are blocked together so that students
change class less and stay longer with each of their teachers. The recent
ED sponsored study on preventing dropouts found block programming was successfully
used "to create a 'family' environment for students" (Sherman & Sherman, 1990).

All students face difficult transitions as they enter and proceed through
their school days. At fourth grade when teachers traditionally tend to
move toward more formal textbook-oriented instruction and textbook descriptions
change from what students hear daily to abstract narrative descriptions,
too many Native student fail to bridge the gap, and it is only a matter
of time before they drop out. Again, at either sixth or eighth grade, students
often transfer from working most of the day with the same students and
teacher to a working with many different teachers and students in a large
factory-like secondary school. Dropout prevention must start in the home,
continue in early childhood education programs, and continue into high
school and beyond as a community-wide effort. Only caring teachers can
help students successfully bridge the many transitions they face as they
proceed through their schooling.

I do not mean to suggest that we have a lot of evil teachers who do
not care about Native students. What I do suggest is that teacher-training
programs do not recruit and value caring individuals, teacher training
programs do not particularly prepare teachers to teach Native students,
and, once hired, teachers often get little in-service training on Native
curriculum and teaching methods. If the educational system does not nurture
and value caring teachers, it will not get them. Much of the emphasis in
recent educational reform movements has been on the better academic preparation
of teachers for students who for one reason or another are determined to
learn in school. Many of the recent reforms point at getting rid of students
who are bored and uninterested in school through tests and more rigorous
discipline. Nationwide, our emphasis on more rigorous discipline rather
than prevention has made our country first in number of prisoners. We have
a greater percentage of our citizens in prisons than either the Soviet
Union or the Union of South Africa. Teachers of Native students need greater
access to specialized training and Native curriculum materials and support
services. The Great Falls Public School System in Montana was commended
in the INAR Task Force hearings for its "very diversified and comprehensive
learning resource center that could serve as a model for other such centers."

One witness at the hearings suggested that non-Native teachers teaching
in Native communities should be given Peace Corps type training before
starting their jobs. The success that Rock Point Community School in Arizona
has had with hiring returned Peace Corps volunteers to teach in their
high school indicates the validity of that suggestion. However, the current
emphasis on academic versus a holistic view of teacher training is leading
our nation away from this type of training. More and more states a re making
tests such as the National Teachers Examination (NTE) the final requirement
for a teaching certificate; however, the NTE cannot measure how much a
teacher cares about students and does not measure whether the teacher knows
anything about Native language, history, or culture. In addition, the timed
nature of standardized tests hurt bilingual students who need to translate
English questions into their Native language in order to understand them.
States have even taken steps backward from the proper preparation of teachers
of Native students. For example, in 1973 the Montana state legislature
mandated Indian studies for teachers working on or near reservations, but
this law was later repealed.

It seems insane, but it is true in this country that a Native person
can successfully complete four or more years of college and receive a Bachelors
Degree in education at an accredited college or university and be denied
a license to teach Native students on the basis of one timed standardized
examination that does not reflect Native education at all. At the same
time, a non-Native who has never seen a Native student, never studied native
history, language, or culture, and whose three credit class in multicultural
education emphasized Blacks and Hispanics can legally teach the Native
students that the Native graduate cannot.

Passive teaching methods

It is popularly assumed that students who drop out are already failing,
but research on Native students shows that the academic performance of
dropouts is not that different from students who remain in school. Navajo
students gave boredom with school most frequently as their reason for planning
to drop out or having dropped out. Forty-five percent of the Navajo dropouts
were B or better students. (Platero et al., 1986; Platero 1986). This lack
of interest in education needs to be further examined, but other studies
point to the fact that it is the way children are taught in school that
produces this boredom (see Cummins, 1988).

This is not a new issue, The Meriam Report in 1928 reported that almost
all schools had locked rooms or isolated buildings used as "jails" for
unruly students and that in some schools Native children were forced to
"maintain a pathetic degree of quietness" (pp. 329 & 332). McCarty
and Schaffer (in press) advocate an "explorer" curriculum for Native students
based on the work of Freeman and Freeman (1988). In such a classroom, students
"interact with their environment, their peers, and their teachers as they
learn about the world" (Freeman & Freeman, 1988, p. 4). Ovando (1988)
describes a similar type of problem-solving curriculum for science, and
gives an example of its successful application with Alaska Native students
in Gambell, Alaska (see also Guthridge, 1986). These type of approaches
fight the problems of boredom and lack of interest that are prevalent in
classrooms that are focused on students listening to teachers lecture,
reading textbooks, and memorizing information.

Cummins (1988) contrasts the traditional transmission method of teaching
which focuses on students sitting passively in class and memorizing information
with more experiential and interactive teaching methodologies which focus
on actively involving students in learning. His review of the research
indicated teachers who used transmission methods caused minority student
failure while experiential and interactive methods created conditions for
minority student success. Other studies of Native students show the same
need for teachers to know more about the home culture of their students.
Swisher and Deyhle (1989) have analyzed a number of these studies to show
how teachers can improve the instruction of Native students, unfortunately
most teachers are unlikely to receive this type of instruction in their
teacher training programs unless certification requirements are changed.

Native and other minority students are least likely to receive active
teaching strategies as they are shunted to low track classes as documented
previously. High track students have more active learning activities and
high prestige subject matter, for example, Shakespeare in English classes
(Oakes, 1985). Low track English classes, where Native students are more
likely to be found, had popular, rather than classic, literature and more
"alienation, distance, and authority than" high track classes (p. 13 3).
Savage (1987) gives a similar description of Chapter 1 classrooms, and
Smith (1988) describes generally how instruction, especially in reading,
is often segmented into a series of discrete "basic" skills which are taught
mechanically with the results that students are often bored. In Deyhle's
dropout study students "spoke of the boredom of remedial classes, the repetition
of the same exercises and uninteresting subjects" (1989, p. 44). Testimony
was also given at task force hearings for more cooperative learning activities
in classrooms where students learn together rather than individually. Glasser
(1986) sees cooperative education as the method to get potential dropouts
to become interested again in what schools have to offer. In a study of
Alaskan education, seniors included the following reasons for their classmates
dropping out of school: not being good at memorizing facts, boredom, larger
class sizes, and unsupportive teachers (Senate, 1989).

Teachers who are not trained to teach Native children, as most teachers
are not with our present teacher training system, tend to experience failure
when they start teaching Native children. While these teachers often become
discouraged and find other jobs, the students are left to suffer from continued
educational malpractice. Changes in certification requirements for teachers
of Native students to require specialized training in Native education
is supported by data from the Report on BIA Education. This data
shows an extremely high turnover rate of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
professional staff, fifty percent in two years, in comparison with nationwide
figures, and Native students thinking worse of their teachers than any
other group (Office, 1988). Previously, the Kennedy Report, Indian Education:
A National Tragedy--A National Challenge (Special, 1969), found that
one-fourth of the elementary and secondary teachers of Native children
admitted not wanting to teach them. Proper training and screening of teachers
could solve this problem, especially the training of Native teachers.

Inappropriate curriculum

In addition to poor teaching methods, Native schools are characterized
by inappropriate curriculum (Coladarci, 1983; Reyhner, 1992). The vast
majority of textbooks are not written for Native students. In the INAR
Task Force hearings, many Native educators pointed out the need for teaching
materials specially designed for Native students. Despite vast improvement
in the past two decades, there are still reports that "too many textbooks
are demeaning to minorities" (Senate, 1989, p. 28). Michelle Stock, education
director of the Seneca Nation, in the INAR Task Force public hearings called
for a "concerted effort...to promote and provide accurate depictions of
Indian people, past and present" and criticized the negative images of
Native people given by textbooks and the media (Eastern Regional Public
Hearing, October 2, 1990, Cherokee, NC). At the INAR Task Force's Great
Lakes Regional Hearing (St. Paul, MN, September 20, 1990), Cheryl Kulas
of the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction testified that of
1,369 teachers who took a North Dakota American Indian Studies course,
ninety-nine percent of the teachers indicated they did not have books about
Native Americans in their classroom and seventy-two percent had not developed
or used methods that work successfully with Native American students.

Testimony from the INAR Task Force hearings indicates that too often
superficial attempts are made in schools to provide Native curriculum through
a Thanksgiving unit or a Native American Day rather than developing a culture-based,
culture-embedded curriculum that permeates both the school day and the
school year. Extensive material exists to produce elementary and secondary
culturally appropriate curriculum for Native students, however, there is
little incentive for publishers to produce material for the relatively
small market that Native students represent. The wealth of information
that could positively effect Native students understanding and self-concept
is indicated by books such as Jack Weatherford's (1988) Indian Givers:
How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World; however, this
information does not seem to be reaching Native students at the elementary
and secondary level.

Not only are American textbooks largely inappropriate in cultural content
for Native students, they are also over-relied on in most classrooms. There
is evidence that teaching methods that rely less on textbooks work better
with Native students. In mathematics, this means more use of manipulatives,
in science it means a laboratory approach including using the natural environment
as a laboratory, and in reading it means Whole Language methods where students
can read and study literature from both the dominant society and their
Native culture (see also chapter 14, this book). Deyhle (1989) in her dropout
study notes how teachers too often tell their Native students to read the
chapter and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. An uninteresting
task even when students can read well, but an impossible one for many Native
students who cannot read well.

Schools also need to develop curriculum that deals with racism in schools.
At the INAR Task Force hearings there was repeated testimony about Native
students facing racial prejudice in their schools. John Bresulieu, chairperson
of the Minneapolis public schools Indian parent committee testified that,

students felt threatened or ashamed to be identified as an
Indian in schools with few Indians or supportive services for Indian students.
Other students, who cannot hide the fact that they are Indians, often face
merciless teasing and ridicule from others who openly make fun of their
names and appearances. Too many Indian students are often forced to defend
themselves from such racial and physical harassment and are suspended and
expelled from school as a result. (INAR, Great Lakes Regional Hearing,
St. Paul, MN, September 20, 1990)

Inappropriate use of tests

The emphasis on standardized testing in this country produces built
in failure from the way the tests are designed (Oakes, 1985, chapter 2;
Bloom, 1981). In addition to the built-in sorting function of standardized
tests, they have a cultural bias that has yet to be overcome. Some of the
changes made to improve education in American schools recommended in A
Nation at Risk (National, 1983) and other studies have hurt rather
than helped Native students. For example the academic emphasis that uses
tests to measure school success has led to more Native students being retained
in grade, and retention leads to dropping out as overage students reach
high school. The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 reports
that 28.8 percent of Native students have repeated at least one grade,
the highest percentage of any racial or ethnic group reported (National,
1990, p. 9). The research on failing (retaining students in grade for another
year) students indicates that it only creates more failure. Even retention
in kindergarten does not help students who are having academic problems.
Countries such as Japan do not practice grade retention (Shepard &
Smith, 1989). With current practices, schools can even make themselves
look better by pushing out Native students since they are evaluated on
their average test scores. The more "at risk" students they push out, the
higher the schools' average scores (Bearden, Spencer, & Moracco, 1989).

Unthinking school administrators and teachers use the BIA mandated California
Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) and other standardized test scores to show
that their present curriculum is not working without realizing they are
comparing bilingual and culturally different student test scores with monolingual
English student norms. The result is that they keep changing the curriculum
in a futile attempt to get Native language speaking students in the early
grades to have English language test scores that match the test scores
of students of the same age who have spoken English all their lives. They
also are driven to "teach to the test" in order show success with the result
that the curriculum becomes based on whatever the standardized test covers
rather than on the real needs of Native students. Research indicates that
it takes about six years for non-English speaking students to get an academic
proficiency in English which will give them a chance to match the English
language test scores of students whose native language is English (Cummins,
1988).

It is also only fair that achievement tests given to Native students
be aligned with what they are being taught in their schools (and not vice
versa!). Testimony given at the INAR/NACIE joint issue sessions in San
Diego give instances of the use in BIA schools of tests designed for state
mandated curriculums on students who were not taught using those curriculums.
The report of the National Commission on Testing and Public Policy, From
Gatekeeper to Gateway: Transforming Testing in America, (1990) focuses
on the issue of both too much standardized multiple choice testing in our
nation's schools and on how the results of that testing are used inappropriately.
As the title of the National Commission's report suggests and Cummins (1988)
maintains, tests should be used to pinpoint student weaknesses in order
to help them rather than being used to fail students, give them inferior
high school "attendance" diplomas, or keep them out of the teaching profession
as is done now.

Negative effects of tracking

"Tracking" is the common practice in secondary schools of dividing the
student body into high achievers, average achievers, and low achievers
and providing separate classes for each group. This tracking is often based
on the questionable results of the standardized testing that is described
above and by racist attitudes towards minorities. Oakes (1985) describes
the negative effect that tracking has in our nation's high schools and
how Black, Hispanic, and Native students are disproportionately represented
in the lower tracks where they receive a substandard education. She documents
how in tracked classrooms "lower-class students are expected to assume
lower-class jobs and social positions as adults" (p. 117) and that "students,
especially lower-class students, often actively resist what schools try
to teach them" (p. 120). Statistics from the National Education Longitudinal
Study of 1988 reported in Table 2 show that less than ten percent of Native
students are in the upper quartile of achievement test scores in history,
mathematics, reading, and science while over forty percent are in the lowest
quartile. The low expectations of teachers for low track students, already
unsuccessful in school, make an already serious problem worse. The differential
treatment high and low track students receive from teachers are described
below under the heading of "teaching methods."

Useem (1990) describes how many students, including many Native
students,
get tracked out of advanced mathematics classes. However, she found some
schools with more advanced mathematics classes and more flexibility in
allowing students into these classes. She emphasizes the need for counselors
and teachers to take an advocacy role in encouraging students to try advanced
mathematics courses. The American Indian Science and Engineering Society
located in Boulder, Colorado, does an excellent job of working with schools
and colleges throughout the country to encourage Native students to pursue
science careers. Their magazine Winds of Change contains excellent
articles on Native education.

The experiences of Jaime Escalante, as portrayed in the movie Stand
and Deliver, illustrate how teachers who have high expectations for
their students and who can bring their subjects alive for their students
can produce high achievement in minority students who are normally written
off in our schools. This supports the research of Bloom (1981) that, given
proper teaching, ninety percent of students can master classroom subject
matter. The film also portrays some of the negative aspects of standardized
testing, as when Educational Testing Service officials assumed cheating
when Hispanic students succeeded beyond the officials' expectations.

Lack of parent involvement

Last but not least of the changes that need to take place in schools
to decrease dropouts is greater parent involvement. Often school staff
say they want parent involvement, but what they really want is parents
to get after their children to attend school and study. In the words of
one hearing witness in San Diego,

They [school officials and teachers] really want parents as
cake bakers and cops. That is their idea. They send home recipes and say
"This is what we want your kid to look like. You feed him and clothe him,
you bathe him -- make sure he doesn't have any lice--send him to school
on time, pick him up, come to back-to-school night and open house, and
let us do our song and dance. We will send home the homework and you can
sign off. You are the cop." So your kid is on probation at home. This sets
up a very negative relationship.

While getting parents to get their children to school is important, parent
involvement also means educating parents about the function of the school
and allowing parents real decision making power about what and how their
children learn. The best way to get schools to reflect parent and community
values and to reduce cultural discontinuity between home and school is
to have real parent involvement in Native education. At many successful
Native schools, the school board, administrators, and teachers are Native
people. Parents need to have effective input as to how and what their children
are taught. This is best achieved through Native control of schools. However,
restrictions on curriculum placed by states on public schools, and even
the BIA on BIA-funded schools, limit the effectiveness of Native parent
involvement. State and BIA regulations force Native schools to use curriculum
and textbooks not specifically designed for Native children and to employ
teachers, who though certified, have no special training in Native education.

Native student retrieval and re-entry strategies

The few good studies of Native dropouts such as the Navajo Dropout Study
(Platero, et al., 1986) point out the nationwide need to systematically
keep track of the number of Native dropouts since retrieval programs can
only be designed when the extent of the problem is known. The new Montana
TRACKS program indicates how states can begin the process. Many studies
seriously overestimate and other seriously underestimate the extent of
the dropout problem because schools do not know how many children have
never entered school or whether a student who appears to have dropped
out has actually just transferred to another school without notice.

The importance of knowing the extent of the problem is indicated by
the Navajo Dropout Study which found that.

Fully 46% of all dropouts expect to return to school and
graduate,
while another 45.1% say "maybe" when they are asked if they expect to return
to school and graduate. Only 8.8% have no hope or expectation of returning
to school or graduating. (Platero, 1986, p. 33)

A regular school based retrieval program is most desirable, but alternative
schools, and General Education Diploma (GED) programs also provide effective
means to further the education of "at risk" Native students.

Role of GED, Young Mothers, Tribal College, and other programs

The importance of GED programs in helping dropouts finish a high school
level education can be seen in the 1989 educational census of the Northern
Cheyenne Reservation where 19 percent of the Indian adults had GED certificates.
Twenty-seven percent of Indian adults on the Northern Cheyenne reservation
with a high school education had received GED certificates (Ward &
Wilson, p. 26). Young Mother programs that allow students with babies to
continue their high school education in school and at the same time teach
parenting skills, allow both teenage mothers to complete their high school
education and to better raise the next generation of Native students.

The Indian Self-Determination and Assistance Act of 1975 has allowed
Native organizations to set up alternative schools for students that have
been pushed out or who have dropped out of BIA and public schools. Sometimes,
upon entering these alternative programs is the first time Native students
experience Native teachers and a Native curriculum. BIA-funded Native-controlled
alternative schools and urban magnet schools for Native Americans are uniquely
able to provide an environment with all the things this chapter has shown
Native students need. Small untracked schools with Native teachers, culturally
appropriate curriculum, and active parent involvement provide a haven for
Native students who cannot or will not adapt to large impersonal education
systems.

The Tribal community colleges also play an important role in sponsoring
locally controlled GED programs for Native youth. Tribal community colleges
actively recruit dropouts and work with local high schools. However, Native
students are often unprepared for college work and need to take developmental,
non-credit classes. These extra classes use up government aid eligibility
with the result that students who need the aid the most run out of eligibility
before completing a bachelor's degree. This is especially true in teacher
training programs as these programs often spell out every course the student
must take and any deviation extends the students time in college. Tribal
community colleges also play an additional important role in spearheading
local dropout studies and other much needed Native educational research.

Nutrition, medical, and drug abuse problems

Reservation, rural, and inner-city poverty effect Native students disproportionately.
In addition, the medical problems associated with alcohol abuse, most notably
fetal-alcohol syndrome, impact Native communities. The need for programs
such as WIC, Head Start, and National School Lunch is great. In addition,
there is a continued need for boarding schools to take in Native youth
from dysfunctional homes. However, despite the bleak picture of reservation
life sometimes portrayed by the media, recent Indian Health Service statistics
indicate that Native people are winning the war on drugs, but they still
have a long fight ahead of them.

The age-adjusted alcoholism death rate for Native people decreased 61
percent from 1973 to 1987, but it still remains 4.3 times the rate for
all races in the United States (Indian, 1990). From the beginning of Native-white
contact, Native people's lack of experience with alcohol has been taken
advantage of. The United States Government was unable to consistently enforce
laws against selling liquor to Natives, and, despite many reservations
being legally "dry" today, bootlegging continues. In addition, bars are
built as close as possible to dry reservations. Former Education Secretary
Cavazos pointed out that alcohol is the "number one drug of choice for
America's youth" (United States, 1989, p. v). The National Education Longitudinal
Study of 1988 found that 16.4 percent of Native students reported that
"someone offered to sell me drugs" in school, the highest percentage of
any racial or ethnic group (National, 1990, p. 45).

In addition to the problems, possibly genetic, of inexperience with
alcohol, the Native drug abuse problem is aggravated by the cultural conflict
between Natives and the mainstream culture. Students do not drop out of
school just because of academic failure, drug and alcohol abuse, or any
other single problem. Many of the problems faced by Native students such
as drug and alcohol abuse are symptoms of the poor self concepts of Native
students who have unresolved internal conflicts resulting from educators
asking students to give up their Native culture. The underlying causal
factor of internal identity conflicts resulting from cultural conflict
between Native cultures and the dominant culture needs to be treated at
a community as well as an individual level.

As Gerald Grey, principal of Chemewa Indian School, noted in his testimony
at San Diego, getting students sober was just the start of treatment. Once
the student returned from treatment, the underlying problems that led to
drug abuse must be addressed. Much clinical drug abuse treatment is aimed
at the individual and does not have a high success rate. Native drug abuse
is a community problem needing community approaches to treatment. Treating
the individual and sending him or her home or back to school usually leads
to relapse. The community, especially the student's peer group, needs to
be worked with. Based their review of the research on Native alcoholism,
Edwards and Edwards (1988) recommend a community approach for adolescent
treatment and give seven recommendations:

Utilize Native Elders to act as role models and to provide support services.

Provide for alcohol education programs that include counseling.

Have first offender programs that require attendance at group counseling
sessions and teach problem-solving skills. Requiring attendance of parents
at these sessions is also helpful.

Professional school counseling too often is restricted to academic matters.
Counselors, as certified teachers, are unlikely to have a real knowledge
of the Native community and are unlikely to have the time to give in-depth
help to troubled youth. This weakness of the professional counseling program
can be overcome, at least in part, through the training of peer counselors.
An excellent example of giving students a reason for learning is the peer
counseling program at Chinle High School that two students described at
the INAR/NACIE Joint Issue Sessions in San Diego. These students volunteered
for a class where they learned about the effects of drug and alcohol abuse
and learned leadership and peer counseling skills. The students then applied
what they learned by helping students with problems. Cheryl Kulas, assistant
director for Indian education for the North Dakota Department of Public
Instruction, also described a Peer Facilitator Training Program sponsored
by her department that teaches peer support techniques, decision making
skills, and offers alternatives for substance abuse as part of a Youth
Leadership Institute (Great Lakes Regional Hearing, St. Paul, MN, September
20, 1990). The non-profit Native American Development Corporation has also
published a number of booklets on how Native youth and communities can
fight drug abuse.1

In addition to Native efforts, the nation as a whole has to do more
to control alcohol and other drug abuse among youth. The banning of advertisements
of alcoholic beverages on commercial television would be a major step in
deglamorizing alcohol. Also, the linkage of sporting events with the promotion
of alcohol and tobacco products needs to be discouraged. For example, the
linkage of smokeless tobacco products with both professional and amateur
rodeo events aggravates a growing health problem among Native students.

One of the greatest tragedies of Native drug abuse was recently brought
to the attention of America in Michael Dorris's book The Broken Cord.
This book describes the tragedy of children born with fetal alcohol syndrome
(FAS). If these students survive to school age, teachers can do little
to help them become as academically successful as non-FAS students. The
problem of FAS highlights the need for community prevention programs that
discourage drug abuse for all Native people and which provide counseling
and alternative recreational activities on a community-wide level.

Another major drug problem among Native children is inhalant abuse.
With the current crisis over the use of "hard" drugs, not enough attention
is given to how students, often in elementary schools, abuse common products
such as Liquid Paper, rubber cement, and gasoline. Like the FAS child mentioned
above, a child who abuses inhalants can suffer brain damage that the best
intentioned and trained teacher cannot overcome.

Vocational programs

Historically, vocational programs for Native students have had a racist
tinge. The Jesuit priest, Father Palladino, wrote that "a plain, common
English education, embracing spelling, reading and writing, with the rudiments
of arithmetic, is booklearning sufficient for our Indians" (1922, p. 113).
Father Palladino and others felt Indians were lazy and an academic education
would encourage their "natural indolence." The vocational education of
students was also an excuse to employ Native children in the upkeep of
their schools as a cost-cutting measure. Vocational education in government
boarding schools even led to the possible violation of state child labor
laws (Meriam, 1928). This trend continued after World War II when Native
workers were considered as suitable for "close, tedious, repetitive work
requiring great dexterity and fortitude" (Senese, 1985, p. 76). Gloria
Kootswatewa, vice-chair of the Kickapoo Tribe, testified at the INAR Task
Force hearings how,

All Indians students are geared toward vocational
education,
they are never counseled for college-bound courses. I had a problem with
my son and asked the school to change his courses. I was told all Indians
go to voc-tech. (Plains Regional Hearing, September 18, 1990, Oklahoma
City, OK)

Oakes (1985) documents how vocational education for poor and minority students
"limit their future opportunities and, in fact, relegate them to low-level
occupations and social status" (1985, p. 150). Her review of the research
"strongly suggests that participation in vocational programs has not enhanced
the employment opportunities of participants," rather vocational education
segregates Native and other minority students "in order to preserve the
academic curriculum for middle- and upper-class students" (pp. 152-153).
In addition, she found that schools in upper income neighborhoods had vocational
programs that prepared students for higher income jobs than vocational
programs in low income schools, for example, bookkeeping versus cosmetology.
Rather than specific job training, employers want to know if potential
employees are trainable. This is especially true in this era of rapidly
changing technology. Students who are able to read, write, compute, and
reason are trainable.

In addition to the inability of high school vocational programs to keep
up with rapidly changing technology, there is a problem with the low status
of vocational programs. The importance of Native student self-concept in
school success was brought out again and again in the INAR Task Force hearings.
Unless vocational education is something for all students and is part of
a pervasive/integrated K-12 career education program, it is likely to remain
a second class education for second class citizens. The INAR Task Force
hearings also brought out problems that Native students have had with vocational
education provided by proprietary schools. Some of these schools are only
interested in the financial aid Native students can qualify for, and students
do not get the training they need for actual employment.

Partnerships with business

Whereas Native students can get the skills and confidence they need
to be employment trainable in high school, there is still a need to encourage
businesses to provide on-the-job training for Native students. But these
job opportunities must not just be minimum wage, assembly-line type jobs.
Too often in the past Indian reservations had been treated like third world
countries, to have their natural resources and cheap labor exploited by
both big and small businesses. Federal funding for partnership programs
needs to fit in with tribally specific economic development plans which
insure that Native communities and individual employees benefit from the
partnerships as well as the employers. Partnerships with businesses are
difficult to develop in reservation settings because few businesses exist.
In urban settings more can be done. Individual schools need encouragement
and guidance to seek out business partnerships even at a distance.

Partnerships with businesses, labor unions, universities, and government
agencies such as the Indian Health Service need to:

Provide mentors who act as role models, advisors, and paraprofessional
counselors for at-risk students.

Provide vocational experiences for at-risk students including field trips,
short-term summer programs, and internships.

Work with schools so that schools provide the academic preparation necessary
for employment in the partnership organization.

Develop a spirit of volunteerism and self-help within businesses and among
students to provide community-wide development.

Provide employment for graduates.

Conclusions

The supplemental add-on programs such as Indian Education Act, Johnson
O'Malley (JOM), Bilingual Education, Special Education, and other federal
programs have had a limited success in improving the education of Indian
children. However, add-on programs are only a first step to making schooling
appropriate for Native children. There is a need to view Native education
holistically rather than fragmented with basic skills, Native heritage,
and other classes taught in isolation from one another.

In addition to treating the curriculum holistically, dropout prevention
needs to be treated holistically. As the research reported in this chapter
shows, students do not drop out of school just because of academic failure,
drug and alcohol abuse, or any other single problem. Dropout prevention
starts with caring teachers who give students every chance for success
in the classroom through interactive and experiential teaching methodologies
and relevant curriculum. In addition, at risk students need peer support
through cooperative instructional methodologies and peer counseling programs.
Dropout prevention also includes support services outside of the classroom
from school administrators and counselors who work closely with parents.

If teachers and school administrators continue not to get appropriate
training in colleges of education, local training programs need to provide
school staff with information both on what works in Native education and
information about the language, history, and culture of the Native students.
Parents and local school boards also need on-going training about what
works in Native education and what schools can accomplish. Head Start,
elementary, and secondary schools need the support of tribal education
departments and tribal colleges to design and implement effective educational
programs that support rather than ignore Native cultures.

Much testimony was given in the INAR Task Force hearings on the importance
of self-esteem for Native students. It is sometimes not made clear that
self-esteem is not an independent variable, but is rather a reflection
of how competent a Native child feels. Having students memorize material
to show success on standardized tests is a poor way to develop self-esteem.
However, if students interact with caring, supportive adults, if students
are allowed to explore and learn about the world they live in, including
learning about their rich Native heritage, if they are allowed to develop
problem solving skills, if they are given frequent opportunities to read
and write and to do mathematics and science in meaningful situations, and
if they are encouraged to help improve the world they live in through community
service, the consequence will be that Native students will feel good about
themselves and will be successful in life.

While much of the attention given to dropouts focuses on high schools,
students are deciding in the primary grades whether school is something
for them. If they are failed, if they do not find school interesting, if
their school is something alien and foreign to them, they are "at risk."
Teachers need to build on the cultural values that Native parents give
their children if teachers want to produce a strong positive sense of identity
in their students. Attempts to replace students' Native identity with a
dominant cultural identity confuse and repel Native students and force
them make a choice to either reject their families' values or their teachers'
values. Neither choice is desirable or necessary. Students can be academically
successfully and learn about the larger non-Native world while at the same
time retaining and developing their Native identity. The solution to the
current problem Native students often face is to change schools with Native
students so that the Native cultural values are reinforced rather than
ignored or depreciated.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are made to implement effective dropout
prevention programs:

Special programs for students such as provided by the Indian Education
Act need to be continued. However, more needs to be done to integrate these
special programs into a culture-based curriculum rather than as add-on
curriculum. The new school-wide Chapter I programs are a step in the right
direction.

Teachers of Native students should be provided with and required to have
training in cooperative, holistic, experiential, interactive, bilingual,
and ESL teaching methodologies that have shown to be effective with Native
students. In other words, the suggestion of Fuchs and Havighurst "that
teachers of Indian children should be systematically trained to take account
of the sociocultural processes operating in the communities and classroom
where they work," drawn from The National Study of American Indian Education
completed in 1971, needs to be finally implemented (1972, p. 305).

School boards and administrators should be encouraged to limit the size
of new schools. When this is not possible, or in existing schools, restructuring
should be encouraged that produces schools within schools, magnet schools,
and similar programs that reduce student anonymity and alienation.

School boards and administrators should be encouraged to decrease the negative
effects of tracking on Native students through the use of heterogeneous
grouping.

Advocacy programs such as carried on by the American Indian Science and
Engineering Society should be encouraged to promote Native students taking
more science and mathematics classes. Challenging students academically
in classrooms alleviates student boredom, a major reason for students leaving
school.

Schools should be encouraged to explore alternatives to failing students
in grade, suspension, and expulsion.

Some Native students still must attend boarding schools far from their
homes. All Native communities that want them should be provided with K-12
day schools. This applies mainly to the Havasupai and Navajo reservations.
If the State of Alaska can provide village high schools, the BIA should
be able to make an equal effort without requiring lawsuits.

The BIA and ED should do more to promote development of Native Education
Departments to help them develop (1) site-based cooperative tribal teacher
training programs operated by tribal community colleges and four year colleges,
(2) tribal curriculum guidelines and materials, and (3) reservation-wide
dropout prevention programs which track students and provide community
based intervention, support, and treatment programs. The mandate of Public
Law 100-297, Section 5106, for both Native curriculum development and developing
and strengthening tribal education departments needs to be carried out.
So far the BIA has refused to implement this act or its predecessor 25
CFR 32.4.

As the "fifty-first state," the BIA should provide a Native teacher certification
and school accreditation program, and Native government education departments
should provide specific language, history, and culture endorsements and
standards. This certification and accreditation would then be acceptable
in all BIA funded schools.

There is a need for more funding of educational research in conjunction
with Native Education departments and tribal colleges on what works for
Native education.

There needs to be a publication program for tribal curriculum and textbooks
sponsored by ED and BIA in conjunction with Tribal Education Departments
and in cooperation with Tribal Colleges and University Native American
Studies Programs.

A national initiative needs to be made to deglamorize the use of alcohol
and tobacco including the banning of beer and wine advertisements from
television and a program to discourage the linkage of athletic events with
advertisements for alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.

Notes:1These booklets are available through the Educational Resources
Information Clearinghouse (ERIC) system at most university libraries. They
include two "What Can We Do?" booklets: Protecting Youth from Alcohol
and Substance Abuse, Adolescence --A Tough Time For Indian Youth; three
"How Can We Help" booklets: Post-Traumatic Stress: What Some Indian
Youth and Vietnam Veterans Have in Common, Positive Self Esteem Can protect
Native American Youth, and Strong Tribal Identity Can Protect Native
American Youth; and two other booklets: Pass the Word, We Can Beat
the Enemy and Blue Bay: A Tribal Approach to Fighting Alcohol and
Drug Abuse, Our Way of Healing.

Franks, E.M., Fortune, J.C., & Weaver, D. (1990). A profile of a
dropout population in a Native American high school, a local perspective.
A paper presented at the annual American Education Research
Association meeting in Boston, MA, April 16- 20, 1990.

Kleinfeld, J. S. (1979).
Eskimo school on the Andreafsky: A study of effective bicultural
education. New York: Praeger, 1979.

Kneale, A. (1950). Indian agent. Caldwell, ID: Caxton.

Lin, R-L. (1990). Perceptions of family
background and personal characteristics among Indian college students.
Journal of American Indian Education, 29(3), 19-28.

McCarty,
T.L., & Schaffer, R. (in press). Language and literacy in Native
American classrooms. In J. Reyhner (Ed.), American Indian education:
History, research, theory, and practice. Norman: University of
Oklahoma.

Meriam, L. (Ed.). (1928). The problem of Indian
administration. Baltimore: John Hopkins.

National Center for
Education Statistics. (1989, September). Analysis report: Dropout rates
in the United States: 1988 (NCES 89-609). Washington, DC: Office of
Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

National Center for Education Statistics. (1990, June). National
education longitudinal study of 1988: A profile of the American eighth
grader (NCES 90-458). Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research
and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

National Commission on
Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for
educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Office of Indian Education
Programs, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior.
(1988). Report on BIA education: Excellence in Indian education through
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